Google Offers Millions in New Moon Race

According to the Google Lunar X Prize Web site, the first two teams to successfully roam the moon for at least 500 meters and send “a defined data package, called a ‘Mooncast’, back to Earth” will win $30 million in prizes in the Google Lunar X Prize.

Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, told reporters he sees this as a way of supporting entrepreneurship.

"The idea of seeing these rovers on the moon and returning after 40 years ... faster than the national programs, it's really exciting. We love entrepreneurship here—it's worked well for us. So we're looking forward to the launches in the coming years,” he said.

CNET reporter Stefanie Olsen explains that the cost to competitors of putting a robotic rover into space will most likely to exceed the prize purse.

But there is more at stake for entrants than just the prize money. According to Olsen, they “hope to make money by developing renewable transport systems for the moon or aiding robotic missions in space.”

The first team to land on the moon and perform all the required tasks wins $20 million, the second team to do the same will win $5 million.

The remaining $5 million will be offered as bonuses for the teams who accomplish tasks such as visiting a historic landing site or detecting lunar ice.

Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, told reporters, "This is about developing a new generation of technology that is cheaper, can be used more often and will enable a new wave of explorers."

Robert Richards, the leader of the Odyssey Moon team, the first to register for the Lunar X Prize, explained to reporters what he hopes to accomplish: "We are funding a responsible mission of returning to the moon that will bring the cost down by an order of magnitude. It's all about leveraging governments and working in partnerships with government.”

X Prize, a non-profit organization based in California that believes in “revolution through competition,” sponsored its first X Prize space competition in October 2004. As the X Prize foundation Web site explains, “An X Prize is a multimillion dollar award given to the first team to achieve a specific goal, set by the X Prize Foundation, which has the potential to benefit humanity.”

According to the Google Lunar X Prize Web site, the winning mission must “safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90 percent privately funded and must be registered to compete by Dec. 31, 2010." Among the 10 competitor teams are several multinational teams with individuals from America, Canada, Italy and elsewhere.

Richard Branson, the head of Virgin Group, established Virgin Galactic “to undertake the challenge of making private space travel available to everyone and by creating the world’s first commercial spaceline.” The company is working with Burt Rutan, who won the Ansari X Prize in 2004.

On April 21, 2007, the space capsule carrying the software engineer behind Excel and Word made a soft landing on the Kazakh steppe. Fifty-two-year-old Simonyi became the world’s fifth space tourist, and his story was coverend by Beyond the Headlines.

Simonyi donated $20 million to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in January 2008. Stationed in Chile, the telescope will allow Web users the world over to explore the night sky at resolutions never before seen from Earth.

The Smithsonian Web site depicts the history of the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo space programs. There is a guide to the technology and people behind the space program, links to other space-related sites, a discussion forum, and a section on news and current events related to space.